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Saturday, January 22, 2005

Methane /= Abiotic

Floridian ~DS~ live-probed an interesting narrative of the Huygen's descent into the atmosphere of Saturn's Titan on the Inscrutable site.

Of course, as the European Space Agency largely spearheaded this collaborative mission, it hasn't received the vast publicity in the states that a NASA-led project would have (insert American ego here). Considering the Old Europe source, I am not surprised to learn that the code on-board the Huygen's probe was actually software engineered. Not to imply that NASA is completely overrun by hackers (source to an amazingly well-structured open-source robotics library package by NASA/Goddard's Stephe Leake is here), just that ESA has historically had a good track record of sticking to sound software development and defensive programming practices1 . NASA, JPL, and their brethren have taken the route of fixing everything by debugging en-route, ala the Mars Pathfinder. Likely the result of the fallout from former NASA head Goldin's faster, cheaper, better initiative from several years ago, most of the recent NASA missions have been either outright disasters (here) or successes clouded by extremely embarrassing glitches (at least to real-time software types like yours truly).

But that's just the nuts and bolts. The ulterior motive for the missions remains to expand human knowledge. Or as the science marketing guys would cliche spew, "to do good science".

So we get some seriously puzzling news reporting from the event and subsequent data crunching. This article (Methane Rain, River Beds Found on Titan) makes little sense to me. Apparently it drove a poster at the peakoil.com news site to proclaim that the methane discovered may support the chestnut Abiotic Theory.

I know that the Abiotic theory is considered false by most Peakers, however:
...blah blah...

Why limit this to Peakers? Is a geologist a Peaker? Would a geologist care to pursue every wacky theory that comes down the pike?

The "aliens manufacture the Earth's twinkies" theory is also considered false by most sane people. However, it wouldn't be hard to convince at least a few rubes to its authenticity.

That article is a crock, let's parse it:

Scientists believe methane gas breaks up in Titan's atmosphere, forming smog clouds that then rain methane down to the surface.

"We've got a flammable world, and it's quite extraordinary," said Toby Owen, a scientist from Honolulu's Institute for Astronomy.

OK, so the article says the methane recirculates back to the surface.

But unlike Earth, where water constantly circulates back into the atmosphere, Titan's methane never evaporates back into airborne smog.

OK, so the article says the methane does not recirculate back to the atmosphere.

"There must be some source of methane inside Titan which is releasing the gas into the atmosphere. It has to be continually renewed, otherwise it would have all disappeared," said Owen.

OK, so the article says the methane does circulate to the atmosphere.

Logically contradicting itself TWICE in the span of 3 sentences.

The article does lead with Methane as being the carbon variation of Earth's water (H20), a covalent bonding with hydrogen. But with the ridiculously confusing argument put forth, one can ask: why doesn't all the water disappear from the earth? This is utter crap science reporting.

Climate Primates

"Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it." - George Monbiot

"In news the rule is that liberals will watch the news, and conservatives will watch conservative news. A liberal will watch to see what you think, the conservative will watch to see how much you agree with him. This is why the headline world is so far to the right even of the content." - Stirling Newberry

"... it is calculable fact, week after week, on show after show -- unless you consider the mere act of reporting itself to be a 'liberal' act, which many movement conservatives do. " - Hunter

"The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake
their heads." - Edward Abbey

"The people of ____ have been led in ____ into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The ____ communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient that the public knows... We are today not far from a disaster." - TE Lawrence

"My life's the disease that could always change
With comparative ease, just given the chance
My life is the earth, 'twixt muscle and spade
I wait for the worth, digging for just one chance
As prospects diminish, as nightmares swell
Some pray for Heaven while we live in Hell" - E&TB

"The juicy stories keep popping out ... like clowns from a clown car." - James Wolcott"Why don't they talk about the issues?! We're fighting for our LIVES here!!" - Marc Maron"That's it man, game over man, game over, man! Game over!" - Hudson played by Bill Paxton-- Irwin Shaw, The Young Lions